Hello everyone!
Back in March my subaru outback got rod knock after I just put a used motor in it. I was forced to drive my race car miata everyday which isn't terrible, my race seat and harness were getting annoying. So I needed some change.

I placed a bid on this 2015 Honda Fit not far from me and to my suprise, I won. Picked it up and assessed the damage. It had obviously been in a front end accident but wasn't sure what else may have been wrong.


My friend who you can see in the picture helped me start it and we were able to drive it onto the trailer.



Once I got it home, I can clearly tell it was a smokers car before due to the smell so I decided to pull the entire interior and clean everything throughly.












Now that the interior was taken care of, I moved on to the mechanical side. After the car had been sitting in my garage for a couple days while I cleaned the interior, I put it on my lift and noticed a puddle of oil under the car. It didn't take me long to find the culprit. There was a gas in the oil pan, which I can only assume came from when the auction yard brought the car out on their big fork lift and one of the forks clipped the oil pan. No big deal, ordered up a new oil pan and some other oem bits from my local dealership for that job and took care of it right away.





Next was the front end, I disassembled everything up front and assessed what it needed. Core support, headlights, grill, and hood were the obvious ones. I was able to save the condenser and radiator luckily. I ordered a whole new core support, headlights, and a nicer looking grill.









The bumper cover was cracked, and finding a painted replacement was becoming an issue so I decided to do something called drift stitch. It's a where you drill holes on either side of the crack and zip tie in an cross pattern along the crack. This came out way better than I thought it would. At the same time I installed a set of aftermarket fog lights, the nicer looking grill, and an ebay lip. I put it all back together on the car with the new headlights, changed the serp belt, air filter (thing is tiny) and added fluids. It turned right over and went for a drive that night. I love this car already. I was able to find a used black hood which I think compliments the other black accents on the car!










Lastly, I got some new wheels for it recently but need to lower the ride height a little so it doesn't look like a monster truck. 15x8 Jongbloed Racing Series 500 wheels.





I commute to school an hour each way and I get about 40 mpg which makes me extremely happy. This will also be my track car back up if my miata is ever down. It has a hitch on the back which I've used to tow my wifes motorcycle and construction supplies for our house. I love this thing and look forward to many years with it.

 

Congrats on the purchase!
You certainly know your way around the FIT!
Not sure if you've done so already, but you might wanna do a trans fluid change sooner than later.
Folks who don't regularly change it tend to have CVT issues as the car ages.

Also, your Front grill looks sorta similar to mine!

 

Nice build.. love the work put into it.

 

I have the manual trans, but I do need to do a fluid change on it soon!

 

Thanks, I wasn't sure if I was going to like this platform or not. I'm glad I do though.

 

Cars (like everyTHING) can't choose their owners. That one wasn't so lucky at first, but everything is infinitely better now!

I love my little Fit (MT), also, and plan to take care of it for a loooong time.
But to be honest, I'm also planning to _add_ a Civic Sport Hatch MT6 for a really-really long term ownership, because I'm thinking, it'll be the last chance to get a non-turbo, non-direct-injection, manual transmission anything in my lifetime.

 

Most of my cars and motorcycles have come from auction and I've fixed them up and drove the wheels off em.

All our cars except for our campervan is a manual. My wife drives a 13 frs, that thing is fun on track as well.
I wish most car companies would keep a line of enthusiast vehicles but I doubt sales would allow it.

 

Great thread. Great pictures. Great build. That drift stitch looks like something I saw on a Saturday morning Frankenstein cartoon. Bring on da funk.

Welcome to our band of 'Freaks.

 

Appreciate it, I was eating ice cream while making this post and got to invested in the thread and half my ice cream melted by the time I was done lol

 

Even better!

We only have MT vehicles, with the FIT being our most recent addition.
I've done the first MT change, but it's honestly not as important as it is for the CVT's

Not sure if you've done it, but the next upgrade you need is to the suspension.
It'll handle similar if not better than your FR-S!
Many folks have stated that they are able to keep up with Porsche Boxters in the corners!

 

yeah, my first mods will be the clutch delay valve delete, rear sway bar, motor mount and suspension over winter.

It'll be fun to see lap times on this vs my miata. Definitely going to be fun!

 

I'm not racing with my GK, but the motor mount certainly needs improvement. I'll be interested in seeing what kind of solutions you find.

 

Awesome thread!

 

Bravo on the build!

 

Most impressive!

 

*Update*
I was able to source some used Swift lowering springs on Facebook. Will be installing them once my new struts come on. Will post pics after!

 

Alright, got everything in today to install my new struts/ shocks with my swift lowering springs.
Tossed the fit on my lift after work today and started disassembling the suspension. I started with the rear shocks, which were super easy and took no time at all. Unbolted the bottom bolt of the shocks on both sides, once I did the springs just fell out. Swapped all the rubber pieces over to the swift springs and reinstalled.




Next was the fronts, to save my alignment as much as possible I marked all the bolts so I could line em up exactly how they were. I forgot to bolt my strut machine onto the wall before today so I had to do that before moving forward. The driver side strut came apart smoothly and swapped over everything to the new struts. However the passenger side strut gave me a bit a trouble getting it apart. The nut was seized and was actually bending my allen key, so I had to come up with a different solution. I couldn't find my long vice grips, so what I ended up do was taking a pipe wrench to the struts shaft and taking my milwaukee impact to the nut. It took a couple adjustments of the pipe wrench to keep the shaft from spinning but eventually got it. Reinstalled everything, and torqued everything to spec.







I bolted the new wheels back on and took it for a spin, and I absolutely love the way it handles now. it got dark before I could take some outside pictures so I'll upload some at a later date. For now have some garage pics!
I will be doing double camber bolts in the front struts and camber/toe shims in the rear to dial in my alignment and get rid of the wheel poke.



Can't wait to continue adding to this car and making it better!

 

Cleaned up and some better pics

 

Looks perfect 👌